Dear Shameless Death

by Latife Tekin

  ‘What if I go to sleep and can’t wake up?’ Dirmit thought that rose season. ‘What if the roses fade and their branches dry out while I’m asleep?’ The thought scared her so badly that she didn’t sleep a wink from that rose season to the following one.

  One night as Dirmit fixed her eyes on the dark and waited for morning, Nuǧber Dudu, Huvat’s mother, died by the tandır. Some little cloth pouches containing henna, a few amulets, several burnished olive-pit rosary beads, plant roots and a lock of black hair were found on her person. The women who came over for Nuǧber Dudu knelt by the tandır. They handed her yashmak over to Blind Fadime, the keener, who waved it about a couple of times half-heartedly. ‘What should I say, what should I cry, since she who died isn’t one of my own!’ she muttered. Then she started a lament: ‘Nuǧber Dudu got onto death’s horse and rode off clippity-clop, clippity-clop!’ Nuǧber Dudu’s meagre possessions were passed from hand to hand, as the other women joined Blind Fadime in her chant: ‘…rode off clippity-clop, clippity-clop.’ Then they honoured her spirit by having a big meal of meat mixed with rice, followed by flour-and-molasses biscuits. When the burial party left for the graveyard, the women first collected Nuǧber Dudu’s mattress, her shawl, her undergarment and walking stick for themselves, then they wandered about the village, keening and wailing until evening.

  Atiye gathered everything that had come out of her mother-in-law’s bosom into a bundle and gave it to Huvat, on the day he arrived in the village, as a keepsake. But the moment he opened the bundle and started keening, she regretted what she’d done. ‘Hush, my love, hush!’ Atiye begged him. Then, realizing that she couldn’t stop him, she spoke to him sharply. ‘Go on, weep!’ she scolded. ‘My, don’t you look pretty now?’ But how could she dare say such a thing! ‘This is a lock of my own hair, girl!’ he wailed. He gathered all the villagers around him and wouldn’t let them go home before midnight, when he had made every man and woman swear that a halo had settled upon his mother’s grave for forty days. But he still wasn’t absolutely certain that his mother was on her way to heaven. Towards sunrise he nudged Atiye until she woke up. ‘Girl, did you henna my mother’s hair?’ he asked. Atiye was still sleepy, so she let him have it. ‘I did but I didn’t, so there!’ she began. Then she told Huvat how knotty black worms had infested his mother’s trunk. She said she had thrown the trunk out into the garden so the worms wouldn’t spread through the house, and had burnt it on the day his mother was buried. Atiye was so fed up with Huvat that she made up a little story. She said that everyone in Alacüvek had seen the worms but had said their prayers for his mother all the same, ‘even though Nuǧber Dudu was most definitely on her way to hell,’ as they had put it. Then, having said her piece, Atiye turned away and lay back down again. His breath suddenly taken away, Huvat didn’t know what to do. He drew the quilt over his head, then he kicked it back off. At last he got out of bed, cursing Atiye, and beat her up.

  For three days Huvat didn’t say a word. He thought repeatedly of never speaking to anyone in the village again and of leaving Atiye, but he abandoned that idea after he started thinking about what a shame it was that he hadn’t come back with something to make Alacüvek leap to its feet. For some time he prowled about the village with his head bowed. Then, one day, he suddenly started muttering to himself. ‘Man, you’re a genius!’ he exclaimed as he strode over to the Headman’s gate, full of glee over a trick that had just crossed his mind. He had no sooner stepped inside than all hell broke loose. All of Alacüvek was rocked by the news that Huvat was changing the name of the village.

  No one in Alacüvek slept a wink that night. Everyone was up in arms, from babies only forty days old to the crippled. Women with shawls over their heads, spindles in their hands and babies on their backs gathered before the Headman’s wing-gate as their men screamed at each other in the Headman’s lounge until morning. Leaning on their walking sticks, the elders stood their ground to begin with. ‘Don’t be sinful,’ they advised. ‘Alacüvek was named in memory of our enshrined ancestor.’ But at dawn they stalked angrily out of the Headman’s lounge. The village elders aside, even Huvat was bewildered at first by the passionate support for his idea. Before he could make a single suggestion, everyone started coming up with different names for Alacüvek. Collecting himself, Huvat finally leapt to his feet. ‘We’re going to call it “Atom”!’ he announced. Silence fell, as everyone turned curiously towards him. ‘What’s all this “Atom” business, man?’ Grimy Rıfat finally had the sense to ask. Drawing upon everything he knew about the atom, Huvat explained that everyone in the city was going on about it, that it was more precious than gold. But, before he could finish, Crutch Ali grabbed his crutches and stood up. ‘First of all,’ he countered, ‘“Atom” is a heathen name.’ Huvat lunged forwards, took him by the collar and shoved him to the ground. ‘You limping dog,’ he said. ‘Even if it is a heathen name, that’s no concern of a half-wit like you!’ ‘Then who went off to fight in Korea?’ Crutch Ali whimpered. ‘Answer me that!’ Still snivelling, Crutch Ali gave his version of the ‘Atom’, concluding with a punch line that chilled everyone to the bone. ‘Whoever eats the “Atom” goes mad,’ he revealed. Before returning to his seat, he proposed a new name for the village: ‘Akçalı’.

  From that day on, both Alacüvek and Crutch Ali had new names. Alacüvek was called ‘Akçalı’ and Crutch Ali was dubbed ‘The Korean’. ‘Let it be Akçalı if they want it that way, but the idea’s still mine,’ Huvat consoled himself, and called his grey dog ‘Atom’ instead. But the name didn’t bode well for the dog. It started to salivate heavily, hung its tail between its legs and growled without warning. ‘Could they have poisoned it, girl?’ Huvat kept asking Atiye. Finally, afraid that the dog might be rabid, Huvat shot Atom. That day he grew so upset that he bombarded Atiye with injunctions. ‘No more sewing for the villagers, girl!’ he commanded. ‘No more injections!’

  At that time, Atiye was exhibiting another of her skills. She had ordered syringes from the pedlar and started to give injections to the villagers. In a short time she made a name for herself, in and around the seven villages in the area, as ‘the injection lady’.

  Atiye at first ignored Huvat’s random bellowings. But when he started issuing orders that there would be no more injections, she planted herself before him, hands on hips, and asked him if he shouldn’t be wondering where Dirmit was, instead of just shouting. ‘Isn’t little Dirmit at home?’ Huvat enquired fearfully, turning pale as ash. ‘Well, now, is she?’ Atiye retorted. She told him that perhaps he should pay more attention to who was missing from home instead of worrying about the name of the village, conjuring up inventions about the ‘atom’ and shooting dogs. Then she announced that she had sent Dirmit to Dizgeme on a visit to her sister’s. Huvat followed her into the tandır room, circling her curiously. ‘What’s this business about sisters, girl?’ he asked. He soon learnt what it was all about. On one of her injection rounds in the neighbouring villages, Atiye had met a family from her own birthplace who had settled at Dizgeme. After pledging herself as their sister, she had sent Dirmit to visit them. Grumbling, Huvat quickly set out to retrieve his daughter.

  He was a long time in returning. Growling viciously, Atiye trod up and down the road to the sheepfold for ten days. She kept her ear trained on the door and often thought of taking a horse to Dizgeme. Finally, on the evening of the eleventh day, Huvat appeared, holding Dirmit’s hand. As soon as he stepped through the door he told Atiye the good news: ‘Your sister’s daughter Zekiye is now engaged to our boy Halit!’ he said. ‘We’ve struck a deal!’ Atiye froze. ‘The girl doesn’t know enough yet, love,’ she said, confused. Then she grew cross with her husband. ‘Maybe Halit has his eye on someone else!’ she argued. She watched him as he crossed the room to lie down on the divan, as casual and carefree as could be. ‘Can’t you keep from falling all over yourself for whoever comes along?’ she scolded him, and was on the verge of really venting her anger when Huvat stood up. ‘Stop hissing a
nd haranguing like a heathen woman,’ he said, cutting her short. ‘I couldn’t help it. I was so taken by the way the girl blushed when she offered me ayran!’ That night Atiye tried to persuade her husband to call Halit back to the village. ‘Let him see her first,’ she suggested. ‘If he doesn’t like her we’ll break the engagement.’ But Huvat interrupted her. ‘We can’t go back on our word,’ he said. ‘No way. So what’s the point in him seeing her?’

  Atiye had no choice but to start preparing. She made huge trays of baklava, wrapped up special gifts and, accompanied by two elderly women who commanded respect, set off for the mountain village where her new sister lived to ask for Zekiye’s hand. When she arrived, she presented Zekiye with a scarf and a ring. Even before Zekiye set foot in Akçalı to pay her respects, everyone in the village had heard that she was quick with her hands and had big bright eyes and a sunny face sprinkled with fine beauty spots. As the rumours flew, everyone who heard about her added another charm to her list of attributes. And after Zekiye made her first visit to the village, full of airs and graces, these charms took on such great proportions that carpet weavers likened their green woollen yarn to ‘Zekiye’s eyes’. ‘Cutting couscous pastry like Zekiye’s beauty spots’ became a popular village expression in those days. It was also then that the women of Akçalı started a new custom. Underneath their garments they wrapped cloth bands around their waists to squeeze them tight. They were so awed by Zekiye’s thin waist that, for a while, they ignored Atiye when she reminded them that this waist-thinning method wouldn’t work unless they had started very young. But the women kept their waistbands on until the sheep-mating season to see what would happen. Then they all began to wheeze. They found that in their zeal for having thin waists they had afflicted themselves with shortness of breath, coughing, flushes and sweating. A few had sores on their hands, faces and other parts of their bodies. Three women had problems with their eyes and speech. And when their waists started to swell up like logs, they all took off the cloth bands. ‘We’re way past the age of waist-thinning,’ they said. All the same, they considered it their duty as mothers to raise their daughters to be as slender as Zekiye. They took lessons in the art of waist-thinning from Atiye and soon discovered that plastic bags were more effective than cloth bands. Thereafter, whenever they had girl babies, they would wash them with three bowls of water as soon as the umbilical cord was cut and then wrap plastic bags around their waists, blowing prayers on them all the while.

  The women who were unable to thin their waists like Zekiye started dressing like her. They braided their hair in forty plaits strung with blue beads. And they never stopped praising Zekiye. How she sat with a solemn face and tucked her hands under her armpits. How now and then she blushed like a beetroot and capered about her mother-in-law like a partridge. And how, for all her airs and graces, she poured water for her father-in-law’s ablutions and held his towel for him. Applauding Huvat’s choice of daughter-in-law, they spoilt him like a birthday boy.

  ‘Why aren’t you on your way, love?’ Atiye pleaded, scurrying about her husband. ‘The boys might be in trouble.’ ‘Someone must have cast a spell on me, girl,’ Huvat answered, all spruced up. ‘My path’s blocked!’ Then he picked up his felt hat, stroking it on the way out. First he made one or two rounds in the village with a cigarette holder in his hand. Then he mounted his horse before noon and rode over to the house of Zekiye’s father Rızgo Agha. Always mindful to give Atiye instructions each time he rode off, he called out to her from the stable door: ‘Pay attention! The villagers will be coming to dinner this evening. Make some asidiye and savoury rice pudding along with spicy arabaşı chicken.’ Only after the sun had sunk behind the mountains did he return to the village, bringing Rızgo Agha with him. Then he put the horses in the stable and led his in-law by the hand to the village square. When Atiye heard that the villagers had nicknamed Huvat and Rızgo Agha ‘a pair of pigeons’, she gave her husband a good scolding. ‘What’s got into you, Huvat?’ she asked. ‘Arm in arm’s one thing, but holding hands? Shame on you, man!’ But her words didn’t stop Huvat from holding his in-law’s hand. Not only did Huvat refuse to give up the habit but, in addition to holding feasts every night, he also led Rızgo Agha by the hand to every end-of-carpet celebration. He left gifts of roasted chickpeas, dried raisins and soft sweets on the carpets which the women and girls laid out for display at his feet. As he gallivanted about on visits, holding Rızgo Agha’s hand in one hand and a bag of nuts and raisins in the other, Atiye writhed in distress and often tried to stop him. ‘So what if someone’s finished a carpet,’ she pleaded. ‘What’s that to you, love?’ Or she scolded him, saying, ‘There’s not another toady like you in the whole world!’ Pretending not to hear, Huvat ignored her words completely and managed to slip out before she had finished with him. One day, as Atiye grumbled in a bad mood, he arrived holding a roll of cotton cloth. Before she could even enquire what it was for, all the orphans in the village came piling in. ‘The kids want drawstring trousers and shirts, so do something about it,’ Huvat directed. Then he looked her straight in the eye and plopped down on the divan. Since it was for charity, Atiye didn’t begrudge the children the trousers and shirts. She ran them up and handed them out to the kids. But then Huvat tried to trick her. He sidled up to her before she could get up from her sewing machine and said that he had bought three metres of dress fabric for the two elderly women who had accompanied her to ask for Zekiye’s hand. Atiye understood at once where his words were leading. ‘You take the stuff on over to them,’ she yelled. ‘I don’t care who does the sewing!’ ‘But, girl,’ Huvat pleaded, trying to appease her, ‘didn’t they have the most praise for Zekiye?’ ‘To hell with your daughter-in-law and to hell with you too!’ Atiye retorted. ‘Instead of strutting around bragging about your daughter-in-law,’ she went on fiercely, ‘why don’t you go and see how your sons are doing?’ It had no effect at all. Huvat settled comfortably back into the village and did just as he pleased. Finally Atiye realized that it was pointless for her to wear out her heart trying to talk to him. ‘Ashes to your face!’ she declared and let him be.

  As a result of her frequent visits to Rızgo Agha and his family, Atiye had begun to speak her words in an unintelligible way. It wouldn’t have mattered so much if she had only occasionally uttered such things as, ‘Ashes to your face, wires in your eyes,’ but when Atiye began conversing with her sister Sose in a strange, totally incomprehensible language, things really got out of hand. Over half of what she said at home became unintelligible. Huvat grew wary of her after he witnessed her fluency of speech as she talked to her sister in this weird tongue. And, for a while, he observed his wife secretly. He ate nothing she gave him without first pronouncing to himself the holy besmele and he dared not go to bed with her without first doing his ablutions. When he found that he couldn’t accept his fear of Atiye, he tried to be light-hearted about it all. ‘There can’t be anything wrong with her,’ he thought. ‘It must be the devil’s meddling!’ But he couldn’t shake off his fear. The harder he tried, the more his mind was beset by new worries. Suspicion settled in his heart. He became moody, wondering where Atiye had learnt to sew and to read and write. And he thought her most recent idea of giving injections was the work of the devil. He called Nuǧber to his side and asked her to report to him everything that Atiye did. So great was his fear that he didn’t come down from his men’s lounge for days, frequently calling out to Nuǧber instead and interrogating her. Then, as Nuǧber watched her mother and reported to her father, fear settled upon her heart. Stealthily she examined her mother’s clothes, sounded her out in her sleep and turned her trunk inside out as she tried to discover her secret. And so, after a while, Atiye became almost a complete stranger to her daughter and husband. Only Dirmit, who was oblivious of these goings-on, was friendly to her. But one day Atiye told Dirmit a story about a black donkey that grew taller and shorter and wept, ‘Ninnisare, ninnisare!’ After Dirmit heard the story she also lost her nerve, and started
to tremble and shake. She said that a black donkey that seemed angry with her kept growing and shrinking as it stood before her and wept, ‘Ninnisare!’ She refused to go to the outhouse in broad daylight or to walk about in the garden, and sometimes buried her head under the pillows or stalked about the house with a big stick, saying, ‘Scram!’ For forty days the black donkey gave her no peace as it lowered its head, flopped down its ears and wept. Tears the size of fists rolled from its eyes as it tucked its tail between its legs and moaned, ‘Ninnisare, ninnisare!’ At the end of the forty days, Dirmit could no longer bear the weeping and moaning and she started to weep with the donkey and moan, ‘Ninnisare, ninnisare!’ Then the donkey took pity on Dirmit. It lifted its forelegs, put them up against the wall and vanished away, braying. After the donkey disappeared, Dirmit stared at the wall until she fell ill.

  Atiye’s condition worsened, as Dirmit tossed and turned in her bed. Her movements became sluggish, her eyes dulled and she stopped eating and drinking. Fixing her eyes on the ceiling, she began to sing long, sorrowful türküs in that tongue which nobody else knew. Huvat was so frightened that he rushed out of the house whenever he heard Atiye’s singing and wouldn’t return before midnight. As if chilling him to the bone with her singing wasn’t enough, she prodded him awake one night before sunrise. When he saw her standing by the bedside, Huvat leapt to his feet. ‘What is it, girl?’ he asked, trembling and jittery. ‘My father died tonight,’ Atiye announced. Huvat’s hands and feet turned to ice and he fell back onto the bed with a thud. Atiye then ran over to wake Nuǧber, who quaked as she followed on Atiye’s heels. Together they revived Huvat and sat him up in bed. After Huvat had come round, Atiye asked Nuǧber to pray for her grandfather. Nuǧber spread her palms and timidly began to pray. And as she prayed, Atiye announced that she knew about her father’s death from a dream she had just had. She explained how, in her dream, her father had stared at her long and hard, never saying a word. Then he had slipped his lighter out of its case and handed it to her before he vanished away. She said the presentation of the lighter freed of its case meant that her son Mahmut, whom she had named after her father, was a keepsake from him. Huvat swallowed his fear and advised her to have someone else interpret the dream for her as well, but she wouldn’t listen. ‘I know that my father’s dead,’ she insisted, and would not permit anyone in the house to sing, laugh or turn on the radio. All day long she begged God to forgive her father his sins. And so that he wouldn’t have to suffer on her account, she also did her ablutions, knelt twice in prayer and called upon Huvat and Nuǧber to stand witness in God’s presence while she announced that she forgave her father. That instant, just as the sun was pulling back behind the mountains, screams rose from seven layers below the earth, up into the heavens. ‘Father’s reckoning has begun,’ said Atiye deliriously, and she told Nuǧber, Dirmit and Mahmut not to be afraid. For three whole days there was no end to the screams, and Atiye’s condition deteriorated even further. Unable to eat, sleep or cry, she blocked her ears with her hands. ‘Enough! Enough, Father, don’t shout!’ she moaned. Finally, on the third day, the screaming suddenly stopped. Atiye put her ear to the ground and listened for a long time. ‘Thank God, he’s free now,’ she sighed.